LOS ANGELES — Sometimes theater can open our eyes to different experiences, advancing our understanding of one another, but at times, it’s had the opposite effect, which is what playwright Preston Choi set out to address in his new play “This is Not a True story.”
“I wanted to do it after seeing a lot of racist musicals and plays growing up,” he explained one night before a performance. “Like Miss Saigon, Anything Goes and Thoroughly Modern Millie.”
The play, which is a comedy, examines three characters whose stories all end tragically. Two are from the stage. CioCio from Puccini’s opera “Madame Butterfly” and musical theater’s Kim from “Miss Saigon.” Both characters fall in love with white men and ultimately commit suicide.
“It’s sort of like their death built his character,” Choi said. “I wanted to find a way to sort of give them another dimension or show a side of them that’s been forgotten.”
The two women, written by white men, fall into a particular stereotype that Choi says the arts have helped perpetuate for decades.
“I think it’s sort of colloquially known as the butterfly trope,” he explained. “It’s this sort of like submissive ingenue woman who…longs for a better life and this man offers…a way out, and there’s this sort of torrid romance between them but it usually ends with her death and him experiencing great grief and ‘Oh, isn’t it beautiful?’”
The third character who finds herself in his play’s afterlife-type setting is Takako Konishi, who is…
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